Obama’s Denial of Responsibility

My Cato Institute friend Gene Healy V.P., and author of The Cult of the Presidency tells readers “President Bush’s “I’m the Decider” attitude sounded arrogant and grating at the time, but Obama’s denial of responsibility just might make us grow nostalgic for it.” Healy asks where Obama has been on big issues for the years he’s been in office.

Obama’s flight from responsibility punctured the stratosphere in his recent speech on “the Future of Our Fight against Terrorism” at the National Defense University in D.C. In the speech Obama seemed to position himself as the loyal opposition to his own administration.

He worried that “perpetual war … will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways.” Look at the current situation at Guantanamo Bay, Citizen Obama chided, “where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike … Is this who we are? Is that something our founders foresaw?” Obama pronounced himself “troubled” by the proliferation of drone strikes in an ever-expanding war and “the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.”

All valid concerns, compassionately expressed. So how can we get this guy into the room when the big decisions are being made?

Whoever it is that’s been in charge for the last four-plus years has waged an unprecedented “war on whistleblowers” with a record number of leak prosecutions. He’s radically expanded drone strikes and the theaters in which drones operate — and his top national security officials foresee at least another decade of robot warfare. The dronings will continue until morale improves.